


we are merlyns

by kwritten



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 08:20:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4012492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU - Sara is alive; Tommy is alive; Oliver leaves Starling; Thea is trained by and then kills Merlyn</p><p>It was three in the morning. ... She whispered that she was scared of being sad forever, and he tipped up her chin and kissed her right on the corner of her mouth – so that he could tell her later he was aiming for her cheek, but he really craved a taste of her lips – and told her that she had him, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are merlyns

_jesus take the wheel_

_let’s go on a roadtrip ☺_ it’s three in the morning on a Wednesday and he’s still not sure how she makes the emojis not look like random punctuation, but they have a meeting in the morning that she promised to attend and he doesn’t really feel like scraping her drunk limbs off of a bar floor. To be fair, she usually owns the bar. Also, she’s usually dancing on top of the bar counter by the time he shows up to rescue her, but that hasn’t happened in a long time. 

Not since she killed their dad and then told the whole world it was an accident. 

Not since she killed his dad and then there was a press conference and a paternity test that said she somehow belonged to him, that they were both Merlyns. 

She says she’s thinking about hyphenating, but that sounds to him like marriage. For now she’s still a Queen and it is more or less confusing for him that way. 

_come on, don’t you wanna build a ☃ ?_ He squints at his phone in the dark. **3:52 AM** “Build a what?” 

_thea their r no snow drive distnce_ He rolls out of bed, lands on his knees and hands and counts out his pushups audibly. 

_49, 50. Now your pushups are done. Come on. What are brothers for?_ He smiles down at the phone and presses the button on the coffee. 

_ollie says we take out te trash_ He gets in the shower. He makes sure it is cold. He doesn’t let himself check his phone. It’s dangerous keeping her words close to him when he’s in a state of undress. She always seems to know. He thinks maybe Felicity or Sara taught her how to hack into his phone’s camera. He dresses in a nice suit. The dark gray with nearly invisible dark purple pinstripes and the purple tie she bought him for Christmas. “Purple is for royalty,” she said, sliding her fingers around the back of his neck as they danced. “I’m not royalty,” he smiled down at her and didn’t move her hands even though he probably should have. “I’m a Queen. That makes you something,” she winked and then whirled away. 

_Oliver is an idiot. Come on. I’m bored. Let’s go somewhere._ He turns on the news. She’s there, in her white mask, beside Laurel and Sara in their black ones. He can almost make out Diggle and Felicity lurking in the background. But that’s probably just because he knows they were there. They promised to always be there. 

_r nt u tired 4 save the world ?_ There’s a Tupperware in his fridge that says “ BREAKFAST ♥ THEA” he heats it up without looking inside. She and Iris West have everyone on some crazy diet. He thinks it may have been Eddie’s idea. He was distracted by Thea’s legs in the red dress Sara bought her for her birthday. Maybe that’s where the conversation first started, her birthday party. He can’t remember. Mostly he remembers laughing. They were all laughing. Maybe he was the joke. 

_You know vigilante justice just makes me hungry and horny ☠_ It’s not that bad. Scrambled eggs with bell peppers and something else he can’t identify. Onions or garlic or olives maybe. He’s not really paying attention. He turns on his computer to check on the stocks. His assistant and his publicist and his accountant insist that he check his stocks every morning before leaving the house. 

_Stop checking the stocks._ He brushes his teeth with the electric toothbrush she bought him as a surprise a year ago. There’s a pink toothbrush head hidden in a drawer somewhere for when she stays the night. It’s probably supposed to be for when he finally gets a girlfriend. She shrugged and promised to get him a new one, put it in her drawer with her brand of tampons and a spare brush and a bottle of lipstick, a bottle of mascara. Who needs a girlfriend when you have a sister?

 _o k wrrior prncess_ He shrugs on his jacket.

 _That’s Chosen One to you. God. Do we have to have the 90’s pop culture discussion again?_ His car is waiting for him downstairs. It takes him to the office. It’s still not fully daylight. Only a few joggers and some over-enthusiastic workaholics are out at this hour. 

_am i work a hall lick???_

_*workaholic_ He reads the newspaper in his car. It’s mostly old news. Nothing he didn’t already know. A lot of stuff they got wrong. He reads the highlights from Central City on his phone. He calls his assistant and leaves a message reminding himself to call Ray that afternoon. 

_Yes._ He walks in the doors and smiles hello to the security guards. He inquires after their children and their wives. He gets in the elevator before anyone can ask him how he is. He plans it this way every day. 

_Don’t you wanna build a snowman? ☃ ☃_ There’s several messages waiting for him when he walks into the office. He waves hello to Felicity sucking down a coffee in her office across the hall as he sits down at his desk. 

_Felicity says you are at work already. The meeting isn’t for three hours. What are you DOING?_ He looks out the window and Felicity shrugs at him with a consolatory sort of look on her face. In moments, John Diggle comes storming out of the elevator, nods hello to Tommy, and then breezes past Felicity’s assistant. There’s a stiff sort of stalemate and then Felicity bursts into giggles and Diggle throws her over his shoulder caveman style. Tommy is able to snap a picture before they disappear into the elevator. 

_oops?_

A second later: _#noregrets_ There’s a stack of paperwork on his desk that he knows he’ll need Felicity and Laurel to translate for him before he understands half of it. There’s another pile of envelopes from Oliver (ala Ra’s al Ghul) that he needs Sara and Nyssa to translate for him before he can stomach even a small part of it. He turns on his computer; there are half a dozen emails he can respond to before the press conference at eleven, there are a half a dozen more emails that he’ll need help responding to after the press conference. 

_ tap, tap _

Thea is standing on the other side of the window to his office wearing a heavy winter parka and mittens with a matching cap. The cap has a hilarious pom-pom on top and it’s nearly enough to make him smile. He shakes his head at her, mouthing NO. 

_ tap, tap _

Her small soprano comes through the window or from beneath the door, “Do you wanna build a snowman?”

“Go away, Thea.”

She stomps her foot and it’s damn charming is what it is, and sings a bit louder, “DO YOU WANNA BUILD A SNOWMAN?”

“Let it gooooo!” he rejoinders. His assistant has arrived sometime in between Diggle carrying off Felicity and Tommy’s solo and now she’s tapping Thea on the shoulder. He winks at his little sister and goes back to his emails. A few moments later his phone rings, the light showing his assistant, he instinctively presses the SPEAKER button, and damned if all the females in Starling City aren’t working against him that morning because there’s Thea’s voice coming through with a damn soundtrack behind her. 

He’s opening his office door by the time she gets to _it gets a little lonely_ and finds his entire staff in the hallway – out of his line of sight from his desk – cheering her on. Not that he has much staff. And  90% of them are more loyal to Felicity or Laurel than him (but who in town isn’t these days), but he never expected this level of betrayal. 

“Come on, you know all the words. I know you do. Sing with me,” she’s smiling brightly and she’s right: he does know all the words. She dragged him to the theatre to see the damn silly movie at least four times. She held his hand tightly during all the dramatic sequences and spilled popcorn in his lap and cried into his shoulder at the end, every time. He knows all the words to every damn song in that movie. She even set his alarm on his phone to play “Let it Go” and he can’t figure out how to turn the damn thing off. He went to all the smartest people he knows, Felicity laughed, Ray got very pink in the face, Barry put his arm around his shoulders and gave him some very good advice about having a sister, Caitlin snorted into her coffee and ran away, Cisco told him to just give it up and thank whatever god he believed in that Thea liked him. 

He had two choices now: he could sing the entire score of _Frozen_ with Thea and handle the inevitable  YOUTUBE fallout, or he could give her what he wanted.

“I thought you wanted to build a snowman?” he saunters over to the elevator and presses the UP button, “I can always tell the helicopter another time?”

“Bye ladies!” Thea leaps over his desk, smacks his assistant with a sloppy kiss on the cheek, “Thanks Doris!” and ran to join him at the elevator. 

“Her name isn’t Doris.”

She shruggs, “It is now.” When the elevator door closed, she turns to him, “Did you really have the helicopter waiting?”

He winks. 

“I know that wink. That’s your _I’m trying to play this off as my idea but I’m actually winging it because it’s what you want_ wink.”

“Am I so transparent?”

“No,” her voice was husky and the answer hung between them like a question he didn’t know how to answer. 

The helicopter drops them down on the tallest peak in the St. Francois mountains, to Thea’s delight. Tommy looks at his watch, “Alright, go get yourself a coffee or something and pick us back up in an hour. Miss Queen wanted to build a snowman.” Tommy shruggs into the parka the pilot had thankfully thought to bring along. 

Thea pulls his phone out of his pocket and hands it to the pilot, “If anyone calls, say he’s occupied.”

“Or just don’t answer it,” Tommy suggests.

“That’s even better!” Thea brightens. 

The pilot looks down at the phone in her hand with misgiving and Tommy whispers to her, “No one ever calls me, it’ll be fine,” and then waves her off. 

“So what do you want to do princess Thea?”

“I want to warm up, brother darling,” she purrs, pulling him into her arms.

 

 

_It was three o’clock in the morning and he was hungover and pissed and just wanted to get drunk again so he wouldn’t feel his head swirling around, or the pain in his chest that told him that his best friend was dead, when she knocked on his door. He couldn’t tell her to leave, because where could she go. He couldn’t take her there, if there was a there, because he was too drunk to drive them anywhere. She fell asleep on his couch while he drank and they woke up sometime around two or eleven to watch cartoons and eat _Captain Crunch Berries_ cereal and she teased him for not being very good at adulthood. She whispered that she was scared of being sad forever, and he tipped up her chin and kissed her right on the corner of her mouth – so that he could tell her later he was aiming for her cheek, but he really craved a taste of her lips – and told her that she had him, at least. She smiled an angry smile and got a taxi to take her home._

_It was three o’clock in the morning and she was calling on the other end of the line and when he showed up at the scumy apartment complex she was crashing at, there was a soft bruise on her cheekbone. He roughed up her boyfriend pretty good and then clung to her, checking every bone she had, running his hands everywhere looking for another injury to be angry about. It was easier to be angry than afraid. It was easier to be angry and afraid and worried than wanting and she didn’t think any different. _

_It was three o’clock in the morning and he was leaving a club that she was walking into and he grabbed her elbow and told her to go home. She was too young, she was being stupid, she couldn’t be there. She lurched her body to clash against his, pressing against him like a warning or a dare, and whispered in his ear _you aren’t my brother_ and then left a lipstick stain on his cheek. She licked the sweat off his neck in a line up to his cheek and then kissed him goodbye. He waited one the sidewalk until she came stumbling out, alone, and drove her home without a word. _

_It was three o’clock in the morning and he saw her slink out the door of an apartment, shrug at him, and then teeter down the street to her car. He thought about following her. He didn’t trust himself to follow her. He watched her drive away. He pounded on the door she walked out of and gave her new lover a black eye and it almost feel good._

_It was three o’clock in the morning and he was stumbling around the city drunk on good intentions and bad breakups and Laurel’s voice in his ear when she pulled up beside him and told him to get in. She took him to a diner and they ate pancakes and laughed about their love lives. She sat beside him in the booth instead of across from him, she put her legs in his lap and lounged like they were on her couch in the Queen mansion and she was still eight years old watching him play video games with Oliver. The waitress gave them coffee on the house and called them a ‘cute couple’ which they didn’t laugh at. She drove him home and kissed him softly on the cheek before telling him it would all work out some day and going back to her life._

_It was three o’clock in the morning and she was crying in her room when he finally found her. Her mother’s death was all over the news and the only thing he could think, over and over, was **THEA THEA THEA**. He called Oliver, but he was missing in action like always. He found her curled up in a little ball between her bed and the wall, where only something as small as her could fit. He sat on her bed and looked down at her and talked, cajoled, teased, said anything he could but he knew that no words were enough. There wasn’t a word for this kind of grief. He fell asleep on her bed and woke up with her curled on his chest like a cat. He kissed the top of her head and she tilted her mouth up. It was a question. He answered it with his own lips. They never spoke of it again. _

_It was three o’clock in the morning and she was arguing with her DJ over their payment for the evening. She saw him and her face split into a smile so broad he nearly stumbled over his own, stupid feet. She dragged him to the bar and poured him a drink and let the club stay open an hour later than last call because she was too busy talking to him, leaning over the bar with her chin in her hands, laughing at all his terrible jokes. _

_It was three o’clock in the morning and she was knocking on his door with a bottle of wine and a bowl full of leftover lasagna and he let her in. They drank the wine and forgot about the lasagna until the next morning. He stripped her bare on his sofa and felt whole for the first time in his short, meaningless life. He whispered ridiculous rhyming couplets in her ear about her breasts and her mouth and her sweet pussy and she laughed at him. She rode him until he saw stars. She wandered around the living room naked and he never wanted her to leave._

_It was three o’clock in the morning and they had their first fight. She wanted to tell Oliver, he wanted to wait. He wanted to wait, keep her to himself, leave the world to their politics and their masks and their justice and keep this thing – this one simple thing to himself. It was three o’clock in the morning and she didn’t know how she could keep it in any longer, she wasn’t just Oliver’s little sister anymore. She was in love. He said he needed more time. She walked out the door and didn’t come back for months._

_It was three o’clock in the morning and he was half-sure that she was dead she’d been gone so long, but there she was sitting on his bed with a strange bruise on her arm and scars on her back that she wouldn’t explain. She made love to him slowly, painfully slowly, as if there was an ache inside of her that she wanted to somehow transfer into him by touch. She took him in her mouth, she took him into her body, she was bare and hidden and exposed. She said, I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU. And he said, I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU. And because that made her sad, he kissed her as gently as he could. He felt for the first time as though she could break into dust in his hands. _

_It was eleven o’clock in the morning and he was sitting on his sofa and she was making waffles in the kitchen and he turned on the television. The headline read MALCOM MERLYN FOUND DEAD IN CORTO MALTESE and Thea came to sit next to him, face white. The announcer smiled at the camera and said in a bubbly advice, AND ON THE HEELS OF THIS DISCOVERY, THE MERLYN FAMILY IS JOINED BY A NEW MEMBER Thea’s face appeared on the screen. A MERLYN FAMILY REPRESENTATIVE HAS JUST CONFIRMED THAT THEA QUEEN IS, IN FACT, MALCOM MERLYN’S LOVE-CHILD WITH FORMER MOGUEL MOIRA QUEEN AND IS SET TO INHERET A SUBSTANTIAL BULK OF HIS FORTUNE. Before he could move, Thea’s naked form was straddling him, pinning him to the couch. She kissed him on the lips, her tongue assaulting him with a hunger he had nearly forgotten she had. He responded instinctively, reaching for her, and then he was inside of her. She rode him until they both screamed. In the aftermath, panting into his neck, she whispered, WE ARE THE SAME. He turned her head towards him and said, IT’S BETTER. _

_It was three o’clock in the morning and the last guests were finally moseying their way out and he could tell from several yards away that she was exhausted. It had taken a lot out of her to put this together. They had spent most of the night next to each other, his arm protectively wrapped around her waist, handing her a drink or something to eat or waving away a too-enthusiastic journalist. In the morning, the tabloids would be full of their pictures. He would be labeled the perfect brother, so attentive, so courteous, so proud of his baby sister. He found her in a back room, alone, and snuck up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing a kiss into her neck. She was wonderful. She was brave. She was giving Starling City a taste of what Merlyn and Queen blood could do. She was his sister, she was his life. She reached a hand up and tugged on his hair, sinking into his embrace with a sigh. He held her up as she drew strength to charge back into the fray. She held him close as he forged his own way in the world. They were family._

_They were Merlyns._

 

She pulls him against a tree and they fuck loudly because she wants to and because they can. Her moans and screams rebound off the mountains around them and they are gods. 

They build a snowman because they said they would and because she genuinely wants to. He is at her service, the ever-attendant brother that never says no to any of her whims. They are in the middle of a vicious snowball fight when the helicopter returns. She is rosy-cheeked and lovely, he is winded and the slightest bit sunburned. She teases him about the meeting and he just presses a kiss to the back of her hand in silence. 

When they get back to the office Felicity and Doris (her name really is Doris) are waiting for them on the roof.

“Did you kids have a good time?” Felicity has her planner full of the activities and debriefings they have that day. Doris has hot coffee. 

“It was just what we needed,” Thea says enthusiastically. “Now tell me everything you want to tell me about that report in your hand.”

Felicity rolls her eyes, “Honestly, you act like this project wasn’t _your_ idea.”

“A girl can love something and still hate it,” Tommy is already scrolling through his phone distractedly. 

“I love you Felicity. I hate the … numbers and graphs and shit.”

“Well then, let Doris hire you an assistant.”

“Can’t I just have Doris?”

“No!” Tommy snaps to attention as the elevator doors close. “For fuck’s sake, no one else in Starling City can handle me the way Doris can. If you want this merger to work, Felicity, you won’t take away my assistant.”

Felicity takes a folder from Doris and hands it to Thea, “I’ve narrowed it down to about five applicants. They’ll be in later today for interviews.”

“I don’t _need_ an assistant. I just run a club, this is—“

“Oh yeah,” Felicity taps Doris on the shoulder, who hands Thea another folder, “Those are three managers to take over the day-to-day running of your clubs and the restaurant.”

Thea’s face falls and they all laugh.

“Welcome to the big leagues, little sis.”

When the elevator doors open on the floor with the conference rooms, Felicity charges ahead like a bulldog, phone already to her ear. Tommy grabs Thea’s elbow and gestures Doris to go on without them.

“What is it, Tommy?” He loves the sound of her name on her lips, even in public it feels private and primal. 

“We don’t have to do this, you can go back to your clubs. _You_ don’t have to do this. You love your—“

“Tommy, shut up. I’m doing this. For you. For me. For Starling.”

“Don’t do this for me.”

She lays a hand on his chest and takes a deep, shaking breath, “I need to have something that’s _ours_. I have your name, but I can’t have you. Let me have this. Let me tie you to me the only way I can.”

“I’m not leaving. Look at me, healthy as a horse. And Diggle has me training…”

“Let me do this. I’m doing this.” 

Even in her ridiculous heels, she still has to lean up on her toes to reach his lips. She presses a chaste, sisterly kiss onto the corner of his mouth, as if she was aiming for his cheek but missed.

And then she’s walking into the meeting without waiting for him. 

She has it all backwards, he thinks. It will be her – in the end – that lets go of this disaster that is their lives. It will be her that walks away. And he’ll be left with just the memory of her skin beneath his hands. 

He steps in just as she starts her powerpoint: REBECCA’S HEART: A GLADES CLINIC PROJECT

“It’s just a clinic,” he mutters to himself. 

Felicity sidles up to him and nods to the map Thea is pulling up, “It’s six clinics, all over Starling City, not just in the Glades. Three of them will be teaching institutions, helping train nurses and technicians. Didn’t you look over the brief I emailed you?”

“Felicity half of the stuff you send me is in Latin.”

“Only that one time!”

“And they’re all named after my mother?”

“Thea was _insistent_ on that part. The logo she designed herself, its Rebecca’s profile. Completely stunning.”

_I’m doing this for you._

Thea catches his eye and smiles, her heart is in her eyes so plainly he’s surprised no one else can see it. 

 

_It’s three o’clock in the morning and she was going over paperwork from the clinic and he was rubbing her shoulders because she was still sore from a fight with some super villain or something over in Central City earlier that week and they were watching a terrible movie on NETFLIX. She yawned and threw her pen across the room and crawled up in his lap, nuzzling his neck with her little nose. They finished the movie and she was asleep on his lap so he carried her to the bedroom and lay her out on the bed. In the morning, they’ll be brother and sister, but at night they are just Merlyns. He wrapped his body around her and fell asleep to the sound of her even breathing. _

 

 _We’re the same_ , she said. 

And he agreed. 

_It’s better,_ he said.

And she believed him.


End file.
